


The Last Song

by Moorishflower



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-28
Updated: 2011-02-28
Packaged: 2017-10-16 00:27:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/166503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Moorishflower/pseuds/Moorishflower
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The very last song is the Song of Solomon, and Castiel sings it only for Dean. Set in "The End."</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Last Song

Dean’s never seen an angel lose their wings before. Heard stories of it, sure, horror stories from Anna, back in the day, and from Castiel, who’d seen thousands – if not more – deaths during the First War, but he’s never seen it happen. From what he gathers it’s a quick, painful affair, but the pain is not a lingering one: a bright flash, and then an emptiness of the soul. That’s how it’s supposed to be, anyways, from what he’s heard. No one’s ever mentioned blood or anything, or Grace, or whatever it is that angels have.

It’s not supposed to be like this.

“It’s okay, Cas,” he murmurs, and hauls the angel up onto the bed of the truck. They both grunt, Castiel with pain and Dean with the impact of Castiel’s elbow against his stomach. He pats the back window, giving Chuck a thumbs-up, and then curves his arm around Castiel’s waist. There’s blood and feathers everywhere, but Dean can’t tell where they’re coming from. It’s like they’re oozing out of Castiel’s pores or something. “We’ll get you back to camp and…and Christ, I _told_ you that was a bad idea. Sam is…” He swallows. Corrects himself. “Lucifer’s too strong. We need the Colt.”

“We don’t have time,” Castiel says. His voice hovers on the edge of a cough. There’s blood trickling from the corner of his mouth, and Dean reaches up and wipes it away with the pad of his thumb. It feels wrong somehow, touching Castiel when he’s hurt like this, but he can’t think of anyone else who even vaguely knows about angelic anatomy, and besides, he’s pretty sure no one else in camp likes Castiel. He’s too stern, too silent and imposing in an ended world that’s already silent and imposing enough.

Right now, though, he’s a bundle of trench coat and blood and feathers, and sweat-damp, shuddering skin in Dean’s arms. He presses his bloodied thumb to the soft give of Castiel’s bottom lip and thinks about what things were like, back before Sammy said “yes.”

“Do not dwell on the past,” Castiel rasps. “What point is there, when we may yet have a future?”

Dean nods, and drags his thumb away. He leaves behind a smear of blood like red lipstick, and he’s reminded of a girl he knew in Oregon, too bright and big for the small town she lived in. He’d been twenty-two and they had fucked on a blanket by the beach, her breasts tiny and perfect for his hands to cup, gun-rough and her all moonish pale in the twilight.

He presses his nose to the crown of Castiel’s head and breathes in the smell of blood and gunpowder and shame.

She’s probably dead by now.

~

They hole up in a tent at the edge of camp, he and Castiel, and Chuck parks the truck close by in case they need to make an emergency run to the clinic. Croats and demons have overrun pretty much all of the major hospitals, so getting in and out of one of those is a matter of suicidal luck, but smaller places, general practitioners and gynos and pharmacies, those are usually safe enough for a quick smash and grab.

Dean drags all of the blankets and pillows – his and Castiel’s both – into a pile and arranges them into the rough shape of a mattress before he lays the angel down. Castiel winces with every movement, complains wordlessly, body tense and expression agonized, when he is placed on his back. Dean rolls him over onto his side and the tension eases.

“You going to tell me what Lucifer did to you?” he asks quietly, and Castiel grits his teeth and shakes his head. “How am I supposed to help if I don’t know where you’re hurting?” That’s a lie, and he knows it. Any idiot can see that it’s Castiel’s back and shoulders which are bothering him, and back and shoulders, on angels, means wings. Still, though, Castiel says nothing, even when Dean hints – strongly – that he knows what the root of his pain is. He only clenches his jaw and frowns at his hand, resting on the edge of a couch cushion that Dean had salvaged from a burning furniture store.

Outside, the night watch calls back and forth as the sun dips below the horizon, and Dean, not knowing what else to do, certain that there is very little he _can_ do, touches Castiel’s cheek when he thinks that the angel is too weak or too distracted by his own thoughts to notice. Then, feeling like a voyeur or the worst kind of pervert, he scoots away from Castiel and spends the night sleeping on the ground.

~

Dean keeps Castiel’s back and shoulders wrapped, ignoring the angel’s protests that he’s “fine” and only needs “perhaps a day” to heal. They have precious little gauze to spare, so Dean rips up some old sheets that Chuck had found at some point, boiling them and then using them for bandages. Blood continues to spot them two, three, four days after Castiel’s ill-advised attack on Lucifer, and Dean worries.

“I can’t even tell where it’s coming from,” he says, and Castiel smiles faintly at him.

“Nowhere you are able to touch.”

Dean doesn’t like that answer, but what the hell can he say in response? He smears the makeshift bandages with antibacterial ointment and applies them to Castiel’s shoulders with vicious pressure. His frustrations pour out of his hands, and Castiel gasps. Dean immediately gentles his touch.

“Sorry,” he says, gruffly, and Castiel weakly rocks his hand. It’s not forgiveness, but it’s something. “Why won’t you tell me how to help?”

“Because you cannot.”

Castiel seems to think that that’s the end of that. Dean isn’t so sure.

~

They break camp on the sixth day, and Dean bundles Castiel into the bed of the truck along with himself and the three children that they’ve picked up at varying points in their nomadic trek across the country. None of them say anything for the entire ride. No one wants to be the one whose unchecked voice alerts a roving band of croats to their presence. No one wants to be the doom of the only family they have left, strange and mismatched as it is.

Castiel lies with his head resting in Dean’s lap, shirtless, his back and shoulders bandaged. He’s pillowed on top of the couch cushion that Dean had salvaged. It can no longer be used by anyone else, _for_ anything else, too soaked with blood, and beginning, at this point, to smell less than pleasant: sickly sweet, like rotting meat.

Sometimes, throughout the day, Dean thinks that maybe that smell is beginning to emanate from Castiel a little bit, too.

None of the children will sit near them. They crowd back and huddle together in a knot like snakes, or like rubber bands in a drawer, watching Castiel with huge, wary eyes. Castiel tries to smile at them. It comes out as more of a grimace.

Dean strokes Castiel’s sweaty hair back from his equally sweaty forehead, and says, “Hush,” even though Castiel hasn’t made a sound.

~

They set up camp again on the first floor of an old factory, although Dean doesn’t know what it produced, if it ever produced anything at all. It was abandoned and old long before the world ended, and more than half the windows have been smashed and blown out by elements, or by people with rocks, back when feeling secure enough to throw a rock through a window meant nothing. The roof is solid, though, and their tents and blankets keep them warm at night, even though winter is coming on. Dean can taste the first hints of cold evenings in the air.

“He’s not getting any better,” Chuck says, standing respectfully off to the side while Dean sets up his tent. They’ll need to find a more permanent solution soon, he thinks. They can’t live like they’re camping forever. “Is he?”

Dean grunts, neither an affirmative nor a negative, but Chuck hears something of his unease all the same.

“If he becomes a liability…”

“He’s not,” Dean says. Fierce. Immediate. “He’s not going anywhere.”

Chuck raises his hands in a gesture of apology and backs off of the subject, but Dean is left to ponder it that day, and the next, as Castiel’s forehead grows fever hot and a small patch of skin on his left shoulder begins to turn grey.

~

They are sitting in their tent (their tent, not Dean’s, not anymore) and Castiel is curled on his side, comma-shaped, shuddering weakly as pain that Dean does not understand ravages him. The bandages do nothing. The antibacterial ointment does nothing. Castiel presses his forehead to the ground, marginally cooler than his heated skin, and moans pitifully.

Dean is cross-legged and holding his rifle in his lap, the rifle with the scope on it, and he’s cleaning it because there is nothing else for him to do until nightfall, when he can take watch.

“Are you going to tell me how to help you?” He knows how to help. There’s something wrong with Castiel’s wings. They’re cut up, or twisted, or something, and they aren’t healing right, not the way an angel would normally heal themselves. When something doesn’t heal right on a human, and it starts causing more pain and damage than anything else, that something needs to be dealt with.

Castiel doesn’t have the strength or the will to shake his head, just lies there, shivering and sweating. If he were human, he’d be vomiting all over himself by now. He’d be doubled up with cramps. Dean remembers one summer when he was thirteen, and he’d gotten dinner from some dive hotdog cart, and Sam had been so sick…

Best not to think about Sam.

Dean lifts his rifle up, sights through the scope and finds Castiel’s forehead with the crosshairs. _How easy it would be_ , he thinks. _How easy_. A liability, Chuck had said. If he becomes a liability, and Dean has sworn to travel with these people, to lead them so long as they’re fit to fight…

They’re fighting a war. They can’t afford anything that slows them down.

“Dean,” Castiel says, and then makes a sound like he’s about to retch, but manages to stop himself at the last second. His eyes are closed. He doesn’t open them, doesn’t move his head. “May I have some water?”

Dean lowers the rifle.

He sets it aside and begins to look for a pot to boil water in.

~

Dean takes the truck for a day. Chuck says it’s fine, they can scavenge from a supermarket that’s not too far from camp, and besides, they ought to find more than just two modes of transportation anyhow. They need something that doesn’t guzzle gas like a pickup, he says. Take the truck. So Dean does.

 _(Keep an eye on Cas for me?_

 _Sure, sure.)_

He drives it all the way to the next town over, a larger town, and he runs into a couple croats on his way there. He drives past them, not wanting to waste bullets. He whispers to himself as he turns into a vast parking lot, crowded with cars, all of them empty. “Fuck,” he says, and then, “Cas.” Saying it makes him feel better. Seems to give him strength. “ _Cas_.”

The hospital casts its shadow over the parking lot and Dean is stopping right in the thick of it, parking and climbing out with his rifle slung over his shoulder and two handguns holstered at his belt.

“I’m doing this for you,” he breathes. The hospital does not answer him.

Dean takes a deep breath and approaches the front entrance.

~

He brings back Vicodin, and penicillin. Bottles and bottles of it, and little containers of something called Naropin, which is a brand he doesn’t recognize, but he knows the chemical listed on the side: ropivacaine HCL. A painkiller. Anesthetic. He brings back bandages and antiseptic wipes and a bone saw, a glorified hedge cutter. He’ll need it. No. Castiel will need it.

He shoots fourteen croats on his way out, all of them gathered in the lobby, barring the exit, like they’d been waiting for him. Wounding three, killing the rest, he runs from the hospital with his jacket pockets clinking, full of pill bottles and capped syringes and little glass containers of colorless, clear fluid. Dean remembers forging scrips with Sam, Vicodin? Yes, Vicodin, we need more…What about the penicillin? Yes, more penicillin, too. Dean shakes his head as he climbs into the truck. His pockets clatter. He starts the engine and pulls out of the parking lot, three wounded croats pursuing him to the edge of the asphalt before scattering. Stupid as they are, they know that cars are faster than they, and heavier.

Dean doesn’t wheel around and chase them, run them down, although he wants to. _Another day,_ he promises himself, and turns the truck westward, towards camp.

~

He lines the bottles of pills and anesthetic up on the floor, careful not to let them tip over, and then he lays out the syringes, six of them, more than enough. Castiel’s eyes are wide and red-rimmed, like he’s been crying, except Dean knows that Castiel doesn’t cry. He’s lying on his stomach, because his sides have begun to hurt, too, and he smells like a meatpacking factory. Like a cold wind bringing the scent of pollution into your house.

“Show them to me,” Dean says, and Castiel weakly shakes his head. His breath rattles in his chest. “Goddamnit, Cas, _show me_. I know what’s wrong with you.”

“You cannot help,” Castiel says, and Dean drags the bone saw closer, lets Castiel see it. The angel’s breathing speeds up.

“You’re dying.” He hates how matter of fact his voice is. Worse, he hates the spike of loneliness that the words send through him. Castiel is all that he has left, now that Sam is gone.

“No,” Castiel whispers. “I am fine. I only need…” He trails off, unable to finish the lie. Dean reaches over him, lays the flat of his palm against Castiel’s shoulder. He receives a short, strangled whine in response, so high and thin it’s almost a squeak.

“Show them to me and let me do this,” he says. “Or so help me God, I will put you down myself.” Castiel stares at him, wide-eyed frightened animal, how the mighty have fallen, too weak to heal himself, certainly too weak to heal his vessel if Dean puts a bullet between Jimmy Novak’s eyes. Either die like an animal or allow yourself to be maimed like a man, but Dean doesn’t say that.

“Show me,” Dean says again. “Cas, please.” He doesn’t want to do this.

He also doesn’t want to see Castiel die, least of all by his own hand.

Castiel shudders as Dean removes his hand from his shoulder, a full-body movement that makes his teeth chatter and his throat work as he tries to hold back another noise of pain. Even sick as he is, he’s beautiful. Dean strokes his fingers across Castiel’s forehead, pushing back his sweaty hair, as Castiel says, finally, “Yes.”

Dean has never seen anything more than a shadow of Castiel’s wings, great dark blotches like cut-outs or silhouettes. They had been magnificent, then, even as incorporeal as they were.

They are not magnificent now.

Tattered. Yes, of course tattered, ragged, like scraps of cloth torn from something larger and then tossed into a pile, but also withered, a tree that’s been poisoned at the roots. The feathers, black as coal, black as sin, droop and are crumpled in odd places. There is something like mold growing on them, something grey and alive-looking, where everything else that springs from Castiel’s back and shoulders looks dead. He smells like inorganic putrefaction, like if a puddle of motor oil started rotting, and Dean immediately covers his mouth and nose, gagging.

“Oh Jesus,” he says. “Jesus.” Castiel says nothing. Lies there, with his broken wings out and the bones all fucked up, the feathers dripping on the ground – blood? Grace? Something worse? – and the skin where the wings emerge grey-green, black lines radiating out from it, spider veins of infection. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I did not want you to worry. I did not want you to bring yourself low to try and help me.”

Dean looks away, unable to keep his eyes on Castiel’s rotting wings for very long. “Don’t move,” he says, and then he pushes himself to his feet, and goes outside. He vomits twice into a bucket he finds against the factory’s wall. He is glad he thought to bring the bone saw, although he’d hoped he wouldn’t need it. The smell of gangrene clings to him like an oil slick.

~

There’s no place in the factory that’s secluded or quiet or clean enough for Dean’s purposes. They remain in his tent, and he pulls his belt from his jeans and folds it, gives it to Castiel to bite down on. Castiel tilts his head back, resisting.

“Dean,” he says, desperate. “Dean, please. I do not want it to hurt.”

“It won’t hurt, I promise. I got you some medicine, it’ll make you numb. It won’t hurt.”

“You are the brightest of my Father’s creations.”

Dean fits the leather between Castiel’s teeth and leans down, kissing the chill-damp forehead. “It’ll be okay,” he says.

He remembers filling syringes for himself, for Sam, for his father. He does it now for Castiel, presses the needle in at the angel’s spine, right between his wings. The skin gives too easily, like slush underneath. Dean worries that he’s too late, but Castiel sighs with relief when the anesthesia kicks in. If he dies, he’ll die pain-free. Dean will make sure of that.

The first cut is the hardest. Castiel’s wings – what’s left of them – are slippery with mold and blood and something whitish that Dean doesn’t want to think about, not the consistency of pus, more like spit. The saw slides in his hands, and he has to wrap the handle before he can get a good enough grip. He holds it against the protruding broken bone joint of Castiel’s right wing, as close to the skin as he can get. He takes a deep breath.

He cuts.

The sound is the most awful part, he thinks. Not like sawing a piece of wood, but more like chewing on rock candy. Hard crunching followed by the wet slurry of the dissolving sugar. The bone cracks as Dean cuts, more blood, more white fluid, oozing from the inside of the bone. Marrow? Something else? The tent smells like a cesspool, and Dean has to stop halfway through in order to pull away, saw lodged in the bone, and retch. His stomach is empty. He brings up bile and spit, pushes through his nausea, returns to work. Castiel makes soft, moaning sounds of pain through Dean’s belt, but he doesn’t struggle, and he doesn’t scream.

The wing comes free with a snap and a squelch. Dean throws it to the side and then quickly grabs the bandages, the antiseptic, and cleans around the wound. He cleans away the spurting blood, the white gunk, uses the antiseptic wipes to dig into Castiel’s skin and scoop up the infected flesh. Like eating a grapefruit. He throws it off to the side, the way of the wing, and packs everything with antibacterial gel and gauze. He tapes bandages over it, retches again, wipes his mouth with a filthy hand. The smell feels like it’s inside him.

“Is it done?” Castiel moans, and Dean leans down, kisses the top of Castiel’s head. The angel tries to lean up, catches the corner of Dean’s mouth with his own lips. This is strange, Dean thinks, but not displeasing.

“Almost,” he promises.

“I love you.”

“You’re just saying that because you’re on painkillers.”

“My Father would not heal this wound,” Castiel insists. “You have. I love you.”

Uncomfortable, Dean leans back and reaches for the saw again. He sets it against the base of Castiel’s left wing. He cuts.

Cut. Pull. Scoop. Bleed. Pack. Tape. He repeats the process, peels away Castiel’s skin and excises the infected flesh beneath and flings it from them both, banishes it. He packs the wound with gauze until he can’t see the blood anymore, and then tapes over it, and Castiel lies there like he’s dead or like he’s high, both of which might be true. Dean leans down again to check Castiel’s pulse. The angel is breathing quietly.

“How did this happen?” he whispers. “Where did we go wrong?”

“I don’t know.” Dean wants to kiss him. He thinks he’ll wait until tomorrow. “I don’t know. But I brought you something.”

“Something?” Castiel’s voice is weak. Dean sets the saw aside and reaches for the battalion of pill bottles he had brought with him. He grabs the one that’s full of Vicodin, holds it beneath Castiel’s nose and shakes it.

“Dean,” Castiel breathes. “His left hand is under my head, and his right hand doth embrace me.”

“Sure,” Dean says. “Sure.” And he lays himself down next to Castiel, the smell of aborted infection thick around them, and Castiel’s eyes are as blue as the sky that Dean remembers, and he’s smiling.


End file.
